RodeCaster Video S: Podcasting, Ham Radio, and Live Streaming in One Box
Date Published
The RODE RodeCaster Video S is one of those pieces of gear that keeps revealing new tricks the longer you use it. On the surface it looks like a slick podcasting mixer, and it absolutely is that — but once you start wiring it into other setups, you realize it is really a small production hub. I run mine at the center of both my podcast workflow and my amateur radio station, and it handles both without complaint.
Interfacing with the Ham Radio
The audio routing is straightforward once you think it through. The RodeCaster Video S has a dedicated headphone output that I feed into the microphone input of the radio. The radio audio output — what comes off the air — runs back into one of the RodeCaster line inputs. This creates a clean loop: outgoing audio from any channel on the RodeCaster goes to the radio, and the incoming received audio from the radio comes back into the mix. What that means in practice is that I can sit at the desk, key the radio, speak into my Heil PR-781, and have the whole thing managed by the RodeCaster the same way I would a podcast episode.
Live Streaming the Evening Nets
The RodeCaster Video S supports live streaming to YouTube or Twitch directly — no extra software or capture card needed. I pick one platform for the evening net, fire up the stream, and anyone who wants to listen along can tune in without being on HF. The mixer handles the audio blend automatically: the radio receive audio and my Heil PR-781 are both in the mix, so the stream sounds like a natural back-and-forth. Local USB recording runs at the same time, so I end up with a clean local capture of every net I stream without having to think about it.
RODE Capture and NDI Video over WiFi
This is the part that genuinely impressed me. The RODE Capture app on iPhone supports NDI — Network Device Interface — which means your iPhone camera becomes a wireless video source on the local network. The RodeCaster Video S picks it up automatically and you can cut to it just like a wired camera. No capture card, no cables, no latency complaints worth mentioning. For a shack-cam angle or a second view during a podcast it is hard to beat. NDI has been a pro broadcast standard for a while now and having it baked into a $500 desktop mixer is the kind of thing that would have cost serious money five years ago.
Bottom Line
If you are running a podcast, a ham shack, or both at the same desk, the RodeCaster Video S is worth a serious look. The physical faders and channel buttons make it easy to manage audio on the fly without clicking around in software, the streaming is genuinely plug-and-play, and the NDI WiFi camera integration is the kind of feature you did not know you needed until you use it. It sits at the center of my station and I find new uses for it regularly.